A dark tale of smartphone culture, electro artist Thom Draft’s ‘Tense’ is one of the most original videos released this year. Not only is it shot entirely on smartphones, Tense is entirely shot by the cast. No film crew, no sophisticated state-of-the-art cameras. Directed by Thierry Albert - aka Albert Albert - the mobile video centres on a teenage girl who is bullied then discovers she has a bizarre super power leading to a life of fame. Cyberbullying and the impact of short-lived social media fame all covered in four minutes of pure, gritty electro pop pleasure. The fame trap: living life through a phone lens. From the very start, Tense was written for a generation who breathes, lives and dies on their phone. The director created the teenager L, the video’s heroine whose life is all about tension, pain, misery. Consequently the brief was that everything needed to be shot entirely on smartphones, and the video had to be watched on a phone for maximum impact. As Thierry Albert says “No big fancy camera, no film crew, no cheating.” Leaving one clear objective: "You are living what L is living. And it’s tense.” Cyberbullying is a problem addressed head on in Tense. In the US and the UK in 2019, around one in five children aged 10 to 15 years experienced online bullying behaviour. The most common way for children to be bullied via technology was through text or messaging apps (56%). These are sobering figures that influenced Tense's cautionary tale of living life through a phone lens. Tense also questions the longevity of social media stardom. In the mobile video, fame happens almost instantly to L as she discovers her super-power - a real flame appears on her middle finger. She’s an Instagram superstar and everyone wants a piece of her. L’s dark tale of our current state feels so real: going from a bullied nobody to famous in a flash on social media for something utterly bizarre. Only to be upstaged by someone even stranger. Director Thierry Albert is an ideas-driven creative who enjoys working fast. Storyboarding is his favourite aspect of pre-production, drawing frames with a pen and paper acknowledging for him that the more prep one does, the easier the shoot. For Tense, the storyboard is almost frame by frame what was shot on smartphones. The biggest challenge posed by the shoot was to work out who’s filming what on their smartphone. The goal was to feel super-immersive with a POV from three sources: the heroine, one of her bullies, or other characters using their phones to upload the action on social and online platforms like Konbini. The gymnasium scene for example had 10 teenagers filming on their phones. “Leading to a pretty insane job in the editing room with the legendary Jon Echeveste” Thierry remembers.

Paris-born Albert Albert is a prodigious talent who joined Iconoclast as director in 2019 following a highly regarded career with leading European advertising agencies developing brands and creating award-winning campaigns. As Creative Director of Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam Albert Albert worked on iconic brands including Coke, Instagram, Uber and Evian. His Heineken campaigns The Match and The Odyssey which featured 20 non-actors playing the same ‘man with a 1,000 faces’ were particularly well-received. He then joined TBWA as Executive Creative Director in charge of major global accounts including Adidas and Gatorade Upon joining Iconoclast, Albert Albert directed an exhilarating film promoting the Paris 2024 XXXIII Olympic Summer and Paralympic Games. He followed this with a digital Uber campaign celebrating the US Women’s National Team during the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Albert Albert’s 2021 film Solo, about a boy wandering alone in the garden of an empty house, captures the wonder of childhood boredom and features the music of Dutch pianist and recording phenomenon Joep Beving. In 2023, Albert Albert directed Thom Draft’s music video Tense for the electro-artist’s debut EP. A dark tale of smartphone culture, Tense is one of the most original videos released recently. Shot entirely on smartphones, the narrative centres on a teenage girl who is bullied then discovers she has a bizarre super power leading to a life of fame. Cyberbullying and the impact of short-lived social media fame all covered in four minutes of pure, gritty electro pop pleasure. It picked up three D&AD Awards for Direction, Narrative and Editing.